Skagway’s Tuesday night school board meeting discussed how to make school lunches without a kitchen amongst other agenda items.

Several items of note stood out from Tuesday night’s school board meeting, one of the strangest is how the kids are getting their school lunches.  According to Dr. Coughran, the school Superintendent, the planned kitchen renovation project got sidetracked.

“We are, you know, still in the process of constructing our new kitchen.  That was a project that the municipality committed to here over a year ago. We’ve had some delays.”

The project to build a new addition on the north wing of the school started with turning the kitchen into a preschool room.  The expansion was then halted due to budgetary constraints because of Covid. Dylan Healy, the Food Service Manager for the school was forced to get creative in how he prepares school lunches.

“What Dylan and Dustin have been doing over the course of the year is preparing those sack lunches at the Elks and then bringing them up to the school and delivering them to kids,” said Coughran.

According to Dr. Coughran, the school is paying the Elks to rent their commercial kitchen, and the Elks club is turning that payment into a donation for the school so they are able to document it as a charitable expenditure.

The school is hoping to resume construction on the planned expansion as soon as possible, while also tackling the new automated air handler system.  That system has been made a municipal priority and will most likely be on the schedule for installation over the summer months.  The air handler manages the building’s fresh air intake and exhaust and is currently being run manually. 

Fire Chief Joe Rau was at the meeting on Tuesday to present ETT certifications to several high school students.

“We had Ashlyn Parkerson Silas Myers, Zoe Whitehead, Austin Bricker, Benjamin Burnham, and Tessa Murphy all gain certification as Emergency Trauma Technicians,” said Coughran.

Alaska Power and Telephone recently started a student learning program with the school to offer apprenticeships for positions like powerplant workers, linemen, customer service representatives, or telephone technicians.

“Kids can work full time over the summer with AP&T and really learn the trade.  Then during the school year, they also would put in time with AP&T.  What I understand from Darren Belisle, who is behind all of this, those hours would count towards their apprenticeship,” said Dr. Coughran.

AP&T’s lineman apprenticeship is approximately a 10,000-hour program, and the starting wage coming out of it is upwards of $98,000 a year according to Dr. Coughran.

Finally, the school budget was front and center on Tuesday night, and though the school will be searching for three new teachers for the 2021-2022 school year as the Jr High and High School Science teacher, the Social Studies and PE teacher and the Spanish teacher are all moving on.  Dr. Coughran says the budgetary process went well and the school will not see other major changes next year.

“The service for students, parents, the community, there won’t be a noticeable change from this year to next year.  We’re going to be able to maintain all of our programs, all of our staff, and so that’s really an accomplishment, especially amid this fiscal climate.”